


As if you don't remember (as if you can forget)

by fauhnas



Category: The 100 (TV)
Genre: Amnesia, F/M, Fix-It, Hurt/Comfort, kind of
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-09-10
Updated: 2020-09-10
Packaged: 2021-03-06 20:01:15
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,675
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/26394574
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/fauhnas/pseuds/fauhnas
Summary: Two thousand one hundred and ninety nine days later, it's not the Eligius ship Clarke sees reentering the atmosphere.
Relationships: Bellamy Blake/Clarke Griffin
Comments: 7
Kudos: 32





	As if you don't remember (as if you can forget)

**Author's Note:**

> I honestly can't comprehend what happened in last night's episode so, The 100 actually ended in season 4 with Bellamy coming down from the ring. This is what happened after that. 
> 
> Title from the song Silhouette by Aquilo.

They drive east. Though the ashes of what the earth had once been, the dry deserts and dead landscapes stretching out infinitely beyond their reach. It seems to curl around them, an enveloping vastness, and there is nowhere to escape. Nowhere, save the sky. But that's where he came from. There's no going back now. 

And so east he goes, riding in the passenger seat of a car he has never seen next to a woman he has never met. As they drive she tells him that in three days, they'll be home. He's not sure if he knows what the word means anymore. 

\---

Bellamy slips in and out of consciousness. Reality, filled with barren wasteland and strangers who know him, is even stranger than his dreams, with blurs of stars and the feeling of falling from the sky. It occurs to him that he never asked where home was, if there was more to earth than the settled dust he can see from the rover's window.

As the woman drives, she glances over at him, and he wants to say something, anything, to relieve the pain etched into her face.  
Instead he turns away. 

When he does, she quietly clears her throat. "I really shouldn't be letting you sleep so much. You probably have a concussion." 

Bellamy nods, his gaze still outside the window. 

The girl in the backseat speaks then. "I bet you'll remember things once you head heals. And then you can tell us about space, and when everyone else is coming," she's excited, and he can feel her leaning forward in her seat. "I always knew you would come back." 

The girl reminds him of a young Octavia, a comfort amidst the desolation. The woman had promised they would find her, that she would bring him to his sister. He lets himself believe her. He glances at her then, a sad smile ghosting across her lips. It's achingly familiar, despite being on the face of a stranger. 

Bellamy keeps himself awake for the rest of the day, making a list of what he remembers. He tells himself he only listens because she's right. 

\---

The list goes something like this: he remembers the dropship, confidently letting himself on while his heart beat erratically in his chest. He remembers landing, and being on the verge of opening the door. He has a vague recollection of the Ark's prisoners not being alone on earth. The rest is just out of reach, an illusory reflection dancing across water's surface, running through his fingers before it is ever truly in his grasp. 

The woman, Clarke, she had told him to call her, was nowhere in his memories, though he supposes he would have liked to know her. Her blonde hair is short for what he assumes is convenience, but it suits her all the same, adding to the intense look permeating from her bright blue eyes. They only seem to soften when she looks at the girl, and for a brief moment, before realizing she was a stranger to him, when she looked at Bellamy. 

He must have known her once, from the parts of Earth he can't remember. She had told him as much between his bouts of concussed slumber, her gentle admittance that they had been waiting for him was nearly drown by the girl's excited questions about a life he cannot recall. 

The child in the backseat is long asleep before either of them speak again. 

"You had to leave me behind." 

Bellamy says nothing. 

"Do you remember at all?"

"No, I don't. I'm sorry." He means it. 

She shifts her grip on the steering wheel, knuckles white. 

"After five years, it was safe to come back. It's been six, and you're alone. I heard Raven on your radio before the pod blew. She kept asking if the radiation levels were low enough to come back." Her voice is steady, but there's a pain in her whisper that makes him wring his hands. "Why would she think it wasn't safe?"

"I told you, I don't know." 

The rover tosses up sand as it moves through the dry landscape, a cloud billowing behind them. There is no sound but the steady growl of the engine, the only disturbance for miles on an abandoned earth. 

"A lot happened here, before you left" she starts slowly, softly. "We were going back to space to avoid the radiation. Everyone - you, Monty, Raven, Harper, Emori, Murphy, Echo - made it back to the ark. I never doubted that." She glances at him, searching for even a glimmer of recognition. When there is none, she continues. "You all made it, except me. I thought I was going to die, but the nightblood saved me. And I've been here, while you've been in space." She takes a shaky breath. "That means nothing to you?"

He must be letting them down, whoever they are, whatever they meant to him. Stuck in space waiting for a message from a broken radio, from a man who has no recollection of what he's supposed to say.

"I don't," Bellamy shakes his head and turns his attention back to the barren world outside his window. "I wish I did, but I don't." 

\---

He had asked about his sister as soon as he was back on earth, too disoriented from the impact of landing to push for more than the simple we'll see her soon Clarke offered. 

That night around their makeshift fire, more coherent and desperate for a scrap of familiarity, he asks again. "Where's Octavia?"

Clarke hesitates before responding, poking at the fire with a long piece of wood before throwing it into the flame, and it's enough to make him worry. "She's waiting for us."

It's funny, up until now, he had never doubted that he could trust her. Not when she was a stranger with joy in her embrace, brought to tears when he asked who she was. A friend, she had told him, and the ache in his chest that followed told him it was true. He still wants desperately to believe it.

The area is desolate, and their only protection comes from the rover. They would easily be spotted from miles away from the glow of the fire. It's a type of openness that would have never existed on the ark, and Bellamy is unsure if he has ever felt more exposed. He clears his throat and scans the empty horizon. 

"So you've said. If you've been waiting for me all this time, why isn't she with you now?" the panic he had been suppressing begins to bubble in his chest, and he turns his gaze toward her, trying to read her expression. "Is she okay?"

Clarke looks away from him, carefully taking in their surroundings. The quick motions of her eyes make it seem like more of a habit than a true precaution. Her eyes return to his, and for the first time since he landed, she seems nervous. 

"Madi, how about you go get some more fire wood from the rover." The tone of her suggestion makes it a command.

They wait until the treading of small feet fades and only the crackling of the dying fire remains.

"What happened to my sister, Clarke?" 

"She's safe." the fire has drawn her attention; it's flickering easier than meeting his gaze. "The only reason I survived the radiation was my nightblood. Madi and I, we're the only two left. Everyone else went underground, in a bunker from before the world ended the first time."

He watches her watching the fire, and he can tell she's keeping something from him. "So that's where we're going? That bunker?"

She reaches behind her for a piece of metal, which she uses to poke at the flames. "The bunker, it's sealed. They were supposed to be able to come out after five years." She stops her motions, steeling herself before looking him in the eye. "But we haven't made contact since before you left for the Ark." Her words hang there, and he suddenly understands why she sent Madi away. 

A wave of nausea washes over him, and he places his hands on his knees. It's been six years, six years since he's seen her and he doesn’t have a damn clue about any of it, doesn’t even know if she was okay in the months before he left her alone under the earth. 

"So you're saying she could be dead."

"I'm saying that I don't know." Clarke looks as if she's about to reach out and touch him, but then thinks better of it. "I'm sorry." 

"Then take me there so we can find out." 

"We can't get to them. Not without tools and man power. Once everyone else comes back down we might be able to figure something out, but for now…"

"She's stuck." Or dead. He shakes his head, runs a hand across the back of his neck. 

The crease between her brows deepens as their eyes meet through the haze of the fading flame. "Bellamy, I'm sure she's fine-" 

"It's been six years. You don't know anything. And I don't know you." 

She looks as if she's about to retort, but Madi's return stops her, and Bellamy takes it as an opportunity to stand, turning away from the fire. 

"I'm going to bed." he says, looking towards the rover. 

Madi, already seated by Clarke, calls out to him, "You're not going to stay? Clarke always tells me stories about before you left by the fire." She reminds him again of a younger Octavia, begging for stories of a world she would never get to see. Maybe if he listens, he'll remember that world, Clarke and his friends and why they haven't returned. 

But he can't remember, he's not even sure if he wants to if it means remembering leaving his sister to die on an irradiated planet. Nothing Clarke has told him makes any sense, leaving his friends and his sister, a second Armageddon ending the world. 

"Maybe tomorrow," he lies.

**Author's Note:**

> So I actually started writing this after s4 ended but never posted it, which is basically just to say the entire work is almost done and it's just a matter if posting it on here. It's old, but I hope y'all enjoy it anyway. I'm @griffndors on tumblr if anyone ever wants to chat.


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